


Crossroads

by CorsetJinx



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, headcanon beginning, pre-Dishonored 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 09:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7568341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorsetJinx/pseuds/CorsetJinx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emily finds herself tracing her father’s steps immediately after the attempt on her life. Now she must make her own path.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossroads

Her descent towards what her mind registered as a never-ending blue-violet space abruptly halted, the full weight of her body jolting as something grasped her by the forearm and held her suspended over the abyss below, all around, and everywhere she looked. Until she looked up, seeing the broken outcrop of stone she’d thought to land on or at least try to if she’d been able to control her plummet from all sense and reason.

A face, familiar at once yet strange as though they’d never truly met, filled her vision and through the burning ache of her shoulder Emily realized who it was that held her aloft with a single hand.

The Outsider’s black eyes stared back, eldritch and strange as the nightmares of her childhood had assured her they were - their depths fathomless but enticing with the faint glimmer of what might have been ocean currents or stars within the endless dark. Bloodless lips did not move, his voice did not emerge from within or without the human shell some claimed he had stolen from another and Emily thought she saw a fraction of the seemingly endless possibilities the Void was rumored to show someone in the eddies and swirls of blackness around him.

“Emily.” He said, hold on her arm neither gentle nor stern – powerful enough that her weight likely meant nothing to him at all but this was his realm and her reality was a gossamer veil to be brushed aside if the stories, Corvo’s stories, were to be believed.

_Emily._ Her name, when as a child and drowning in some nameless fear his shape had called her _‘Little Emily’_ and _‘Little Empress’_.

_Emily_ , when this was the first time in years she had truly been aware of him, of the Void _(how could she not be with it all around, there and all-encompassing, seeping into her senses?)_ , and she might be tall enough to look him in the eye on her own if they stood on even ground.

But they weren’t.

The Outsider held her aloft with a single hand over the abyss of the Void and stared into the reaches of her mind with his black, black eyes and Emily would have sworn that he saw everything she was _(could be, might one day be)_ and was waiting for her to act.

The fingers of her captured hand curled, tingling with numbness, with adrenaline, and her heart _(her beating, beating heart)_ thundered in her chest with anger, with fear, with anticipation –

“I am not afraid of you.” Emily nearly snarls up at him, at the Void itself. Delilah might have ambushed her, separated her from Corvo, but she would not cower before a supposed god and the expanse of stolen impressions around them.

Something passes over the ageless features the Void’s emissary claimed as his own, something that might have a name if only she might guess it, be able to roughly apply it into human terms.

“Perhaps not.” He says, watching her, looking through her to everything – to nothing – else. “But there are things you fear, Little Empress, and now one of them has come for you out of the shadows.”

Emily cannot help the twist in her own features as the burn settles itself over her skin – the Mark she knows from Corvo’s hand flickering on the back of her own in blazing orange-gold and cool teal-blue. The back of her mind fills with possibilities, with knowledge, and how she might use it – the Outsider speaks again before she can attempt to grasp it for herself, an expression close to a smug sort of knowing on his face.

“Come and find me, Emily. If you can.”

His fingers uncurl, or simply vanish, and she is falling again – into endless distance, into Void itself, a scream lodged in her throat that burns like seawater and her heart skipping what feels like several beats as the jagged outcrop of rock and cobble gets smaller.

Black mist erupts from the back of her hand, a sturdy vine launching itself towards the shape and Emily feels no pain from it – the prickle of chill sensation and a rise of noise in her ears not unlike whalesong filling the blank space left behind by shock and panic before she stops, before she is pulled up to set booted feet on broken stone and behold the obstacle course around her.

The Void waits all around her, the Mark on her hand fading to simple black that might be mistaken for ink as she takes stock of this newfound ability.

Emily heads forward.


End file.
